It’s that time of year when we’ll eat to excess, take naps to sleep it off, and then get up in time for a Black Friday shopping marathon.

As you head to the Christmas sales, remember that not everyone is quite so fortunate. With that in mind, we’d like to encourage setting aside spare change, or more, to support organizations to help the needy among us this holiday season. Here are a couple of Columbia County organizations that do an especially good job in that regard:

They don’t ask for sympathy, but they certainly deserve it. Once a year, Columbia County’s school superintendent and members of the board of education line up on stage at Augusta’s James Brown Arena, shaking the hand of every new high school graduate.

It’s entirely possible to overanalyze the essentially meaningless write-in votes in any given election – to write too much into it, if you will.

But certainly there are lessons that can be found, both for candidates and for potential challengers, from the long lists of names voters choose to type into the touch-screen ballots. In Columbia County, for example, the list of write-ins runs 89 pages.

Stunning. The Halloween night shooting of Kristen Burnette means that for the third time in less than two years, a 13-year-old Columbia County girl has been shot to death by a Columbia County boy. In each case, no adults were in the home at the time, and the boy was using a weapon taken from an absent adult.

In all three cases, families and friends on both sides have been devastated, and the broader community is stunned. Whatever can be done to prevent such tragedy clearly isn’t happening.

In a season in which there is far too much seriousness in the political arena, it’s good to see occasional humor injected into the process.

U.S. Rep. Paul Broun, a physician, recently drew attention for a speech to a church group in which he denounced evolution and other scientific theories as “lies straight from the pit of hell.” To counter, a group rallied Friday in the Athens Republican’s hometown to urge a write-in vote in the 10th District congressional race for Charles Darwin.

This editorial page has made it clear that we believe voters should reject Amendment 1, the charter schools question, which would allow state officials to grab control of public education from local communities and their elected leaders.

It wasn’t until after the 9/11 attacks that Americans were jarred into realizing the daily sacrifice of first responders. Educators seem more often criticized than praised. Double that for any government bureaucrats, expected to do everything and spend nothing.

So when a public servant wins a significant honor, it can be a big deal.

That’s the case with the Bill Barr Leadership Award given to retiring Columbia County school superintendent, Charles Nagle.

Even though the all-important general election day won’t be here for three more weeks, voters in Columbia County can head to the polls starting Monday.

There are no purely local races on the ballot. All of the non-partisan races were decided during the primary, as were the partisan races when no Democrats signed up to run. Several races from larger districts that include Columbia County are on the ballot, but it’s a given that most of the county’s voters will pick the Republican in those cases.